Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

If you guessed that it means it’s time for pumpkin baked goods, then you are half correct. But what I was really going to say is that it’s finally time for me to turn on the heat in my house.

You see, no matter how cold it gets, I refuse to turn on the heat before October 1st. Why? I don’t really know. Probably because I’m stubborn and I like to make myself suffer un-necessarily. Really smart, right? Yeah I know. Usually it’s not much of a problem, but we’ve had a serious cold snap lately and my house was only 57 degrees when I woke up one morning this past week. Yikes! That wasn’t very fun.

I do have one little work-around for my rule though: turning on the oven doesn’t count as turning on the heat. So needless to say, I’ve been baking up a storm to try and keep myself nice and toasty!

I saw this recipe for Inside-Out Pumpkin Muffins on the King Arthur Flour blog and I couldn’t wait to make them. One, because I love a good cream cheese-packed breakfast item. And two, because this recipe calls for an ingredient called “boiled cider”. Now you can buy boiled cider from King Arthur Flour, but from what I gathered it’s simply fresh apple cider that has been reduced down. And I just so happened to have made some boiled cider a few weeks ago. I called it apple cider syrup and you can find the recipe and instructions here.

If you don’t want to make apple cider syrup (and you don’t want to buy boiled cider), have no fear because you can still enjoy these muffins. I’ve made batches where I’ve replaced the cider with either molasses or dark corn syrup, and the results are equally delicious!

Make the cream cheese filling. Whisk together all of the ingredients in a medium bowl until smooth. Set aside.

Make the muffin batter. In the bowl of your mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the eggs and the next nine ingredients (through the salt). Beat until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the flour, one third at a time, beating after each addition until just combined. Don’t over mix the batter or the muffins will become tough.

Add a heaping tablespoon of the batter into each muffin cup, spreading it out to cover the bottom. Then drop a heaping teaspoon of the cream cheese filling into each muffin cup. Cover the filling with another heaping tablespoon of batter. If you have any batter left over, distribute it evenly among the muffin cups.

Transfer the muffin pan to your pre-heated oven and bake for 18-20 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes. Then remove the muffins from the pan and allow them to continue cooling on the wire rack. Once the muffins are completely cooled, they can be stored at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 2 days.